Ryan Dolan bests illnesses with some help from his Rockford Lutheran teammates

Wednesday

Mar 19, 2014 at 10:45 PMMar 19, 2014 at 10:45 PM

By Jay TaftRockford Register Star

ROCKFORD — Ryan Dolan was always tough.

After several injuries and a cancer scare, he just got tougher.

And the Lutheran Crusaders boys basketball team was always a tight-knit group.

It just got tighter.

Dolan, the team’s 6-foot-8 starting center at the beginning of the season, has dealt with a lifetime’s worth of adversity in the past few months. The Lutheran team coped not only with Dolan’s setbacks but saw four other key players miss playing time because of injuries.

Regardless, the Crusaders and Dolan have advanced to Friday’s Class 3A state semifinals against No. 1-ranked Lincoln. Tipoff is at 12:15 p.m. in Peoria.

“For Ryan, and for this team, it’s just been a ride that we can’t believe ourselves,” coach Tom Guse said. “And to get through everything we’ve been through, and to be on this doorstep, playing for a chance to battle for the state championship, it’s hard to imagine.”

Broken ankles

For Dolan, what’s hard to imagine is how so many challenges fell on him so quickly. He lost one of his kidneys to a cancerous Wilms’ tumor when he was 2 years old, but “I never expected a year like this.”

The year started fine. The junior was averaging double figures and made the all-tournament team at the Strombom Thanksgiving Tournament in Sycamore.

But he broke his right fibula four games into the season. Surgery put him out of commission for eight weeks. He returned, only to play three games before breaking his left ankle.

“After the first broken ankle, Ryan handled it all perfectly,” Guse said. “By the second one, he was a little bit like, ‘Come on, why me?’ And then it only got worse, but he just got tougher.”

Cancer scare

While rehabbing his second broken bone, Dolan had a lump on his back tested. Dolan, his family and his teammates feared cancer. By then, the Crusaders were 24-2.

“But everything else stopped being important when (the doctors) told Ryan he probably had cancer,” said senior Thomas Kopelman, the team’s leading scorer at just less than 24 points a game. “I mean, that’s my best friend, and this team has been close forever, so we all felt it. It was unimaginable. It was a very rough week.”

But from that latest low came another high and low.

Eight days later, when Dolan went in for the biopsy results, doctors quickly told him their initial thoughts about the lump were wrong. It was a nonmalignant tumor.

“It certainly wasn’t the worst news, but it just seemed like it never ended,” Ryan’s dad, Jim, said. “The cancer thing was over, but they punctured his lung during the procedure, and he was in the hospital for eight days getting that taken care of.

“The whole way, the team was there for him, and he was there for the team.”

Ordeal ends

Dolan lost about 15 pounds and “plenty of speed and some touch on my jump shot,” but he returned to practice last week. He got back on the court Tuesday for the No. 8-ranked Crusaders. As his team hung on to an early lead in the DeKalb Supersectional, Dolan trotted onto the floor to roaring applause.

“It was so surreal,” mom Melissa said. “He leaned on his teammates so much through it all and to see him run out there with them again was an amazing feeling. He’s been through quite a bit, but he just keeps moving forward.

“The team has certainly helped him through all of this, and I think the way he’s handled himself has inspired them some, too.”

Dolan has played eight games this season. He has drained all six of his two-point field goals and has gone 17 of 31 from 3-point range. He’s had 18 rebounds, 13 assists and six blocked shots. He went 0-for-2 from the field Tuesday in two minutes of playing time, and he hopes to play in Lutheran’s two games at state Friday and Saturday.

He also hopes the second one is for the school’s first state title in boys basketball.

“This is the group to do it. They all showed that to me this year. I’ll try to help as much as Coach needs me and as much as I can. But this is a team, this is a very tight team, and that’s how we’re going to win it.”

His positive attitude, his work ethic, his quick decision to fight any disease doctors told him he had, and his drive to rejoin his teammates has inspired the Crusaders, Guse said.

“How can you not be motivated from watching how he’s handled himself through all of this?” he said.

Through it all, the team has wound up in contention for a championship.

“Not a lot of teams have been through what this team has been through. Through it all, we’ve never parted,” senior point guard Kendall Lawson said. “Now we need to all go out there and finish the job. Together.”